Indo Grooves is Florida Atlantic University’s first Bollywood fusion dance team on the Boca Raton campus. Through celebrating traditional Indian events and bringing together students through dance, they aim to unite students of all cultural backgrounds.
With a little under 50% of the international student population being of Indian heritage, providing a space for these students to share and engage in their cultural traditions was extremely important to Sabareshwaran Muthu, Indo Grooves’ founder and president.
“[The club] allows international students to feel like they don’t feel so far from home,” he said. “We give these opportunities and started this club [to help them] explore their cultures. We also want to bring that culture and showcase our dance styles to everyone around.”
Shilpa Karedla, vice president of Indo Grooves, is optimistic about sharing Indian culture, not just with other Indian students, but with students of all backgrounds.
“We are ambitious in showcasing our Indian culture,” she said. “We started [the club] because of our love for the dances and our desire to bring the classic South Indian style, to introduce the culture to all of the people here.”
Muthu echoed this sentiment, saying he feels hopeful about garnering more members and maintaining a welcoming space for all students.
“We have around 25 students in the club, but we have kept it open to all students who are interested in dance, and they can just come in and learn new [dance] routines every week,” he said.
The club meets for practice sessions twice a week, where students warm up and practice a routine. Muthu, the main choreographer for Indo Grooves, is able to combine different songs and dances to bring the show to life. He finds it a challenge to bring together these many dances and experience levels.
Indo Grooves doesn’t just celebrate one dance or tradition in India; the group seeks to highlight the various cultures in the country.
Sreelekha Potturi, club captain at Indo Grooves, revealed that club members speak English with each other, considering they come from regions with different languages.
“The most interesting thing is that [since] we speak different languages, we have added songs with the different languages,” she said. “There are many people from South India, from different states, and they have also enjoyed this.”
Teaching dances to such a diverse range of students does bring its own set of challenges, Muthu noted.
“I have to put in all the different songs together so the whole performance shouldn’t be flat. Choreographing students is often the most difficult part,” he said. “The club is open to anyone who is interested in dance, so teaching them is challenging.”
The executive board members met each other off-campus. They bonded over their love for South Indian Bollywood dance traditions, which sparked the creation of Indo Grooves.
“It started out as a common interest — so when we were hanging out, we realized that all of us had a common interest in dance, and we thought of starting something like a Bollywood dance fusion club so that we could bring in our different cultures,” she said.
Muthu, who started learning traditional South Indian dance in the fourth grade, came to FAU in 2023 to complete his graduate program in data science and analytics. He said he noticed a lack of clubs that celebrated his cultural dances, so he took it upon himself to start his own.
“As soon as I came here, I was searching for a club but there wasn’t any, and we just came here last year so we didn’t know who to reach out to start a club. It took us like a year to figure things out, and then we came up with this idea and we have just started,” he said.
Since its launch in August, Indo Grooves has participated in Diwali celebrations, a major Hindu holiday, for companies such as Carrier and NextEra Energy.
“They reached out to us through LinkedIn, and [these companies] had seen our Instagram page and were interested,” he said.
Muthu explained how this experience benefitted the club, allowing members to network outside of campus and connect with others through dance.
“We had the opportunity to meet all the organization leaders and get to network with them. It was a pretty good experience for the club members as well,” he said.
Potturi is excited by the amount of student engagement the club has received since its start, sharing that members are very active in the club.
“A lot of people who came to us and asked us about the process, and actually showed interest, actually showed up to most of our practice sessions that take place twice a week. So, that is what excites us and keeps us going,” she said.
Karedla organizes events for the club based on Indian cultural calendars, hoping to provide an event for each important occasion students may want to celebrate throughout the year.
The club was able to attract over 250 students during Ganesh Chaturthi, an Indian festival that celebrates the Hindu goddess Ganesha. Such a large turnout is what motivates the Indo Grooves team to keep going, Karedla said.
“In India, dance is like an expression of your feelings and emotions — dance tells your story about your culture. Most of the Indian dances convey a story through dance, which makes it very devotional to us,” Potturi said.
Gabriela Quintero is a Staff Writer for the University Press. For more information regarding this or other stories, email Quintero at [email protected].
